GitHub Actions

You can create visual test sessions from GitHub Actions workflows - useful when your CI lives in GitHub but you want Buddy's rendering matrix, diffing, and review flow. Buddy reports the session result back to GitHub as a commit status, so you can gate merges on visual approval.

Secret configuration in GitHub

To use BUDDY_VT_TOKEN in GitHub Actions, add it as a secret in your repository:

1. Navigate to Settings > Secrets and variables > Actions in your GitHub repository
2. Click New repository secret
3. Enter the name: BUDDY_VT_TOKEN
4. Enter the token from the suite settings in Buddy
5. Click Add secret

Example GitHub Actions workflow

Install the bdy CLI in the job and wrap your test command with session create:

yaml
name: Visual Tests
on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  visual-tests:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: '20'
      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm ci
      - name: Install Buddy CLI
        run: npm i -g bdy
      - name: Run visual tests
        env:
          BUDDY_VT_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.BUDDY_VT_TOKEN }}
        run: bdy tests visual session create "npx playwright test"

For a Storybook suite, replace the last step with:

yaml
      - name: Upload Storybook
        env:
          BUDDY_VT_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.BUDDY_VT_TOKEN }}
        run: |
          npm run build-storybook
          cd storybook-static && bdy tests visual upload

Blocking merges until changes are approved

Buddy sends a commit status to GitHub for each session. A session with unreviewed visual changes reports as pending, so you can enforce review with a branch protection rule:

1. In your GitHub repository, go to Settings > Branches and edit the protection rule for your target branch
2. Enable Require status checks to pass before merging
3. Add the Buddy visual tests status check to the required list

With this in place, a pull request that introduces visual changes cannot be merged until someone approves the session in Buddy - see Reviewing & Approvals.